The Galaxy Builder (18 page)

            "Uh-oh," Marv said, his eyes on the
entry behind Lafayette and Mickey Jo. "Looks like Ed finked."

            O'Leary turned as if casually and saw three
harness bulls shouldering through the door, eyes alert, hands on pistol butts.
They hurried across to a table in a far corner, bent in earnest consultation
with a plain-looking gray-haired woman. After a brief conference, the three
cops made their way to the kitchen doors and passed from view.

            "Some rich dame who didn't like the
service, eh?" Marv cracked. Then their waiter arrived with a bustle.

-

            "This is the life," Lafayette said,
inhaling expansively over a bowl of meaty soup which he knew was a mere hint of
delights to come. "Relaxing in a cozy eatery with an old pal and a pretty
girl: that's what I
should
be doing, not being chased all over a dozen
continua by an assortment of shady characters. That last pair: Fred, from the
fishpond, and his boss Mel. They had big plans for me. Well, I've broken the
pattern at last, and already things are looking up. Marv, I was really
surprised when I looked out that window and saw you, of all people, in this
strange place. And you seemed to expect me: you looked right at me."

            "Never seen you, Al," Marv grated.
"Just looking around, like; then I got fed up and taken off; and then I
got to thinking maybe I better stick around a little longer, so I come back.
After all, the message was pretty clear: corner of Main and Sioux, at five
pee-em sharp—"

            "What message?" Lafayette cut in.
"Maybe I'm not as clear as I thought if somebody knew I'd be there."

            "You know, Al,
your
message,"
Marv said around a mouthful of soup.

            "I didn't send any message," Lafayette
said between spoonfuls.

            "Sure, you know," Marv urged.
"When I come outa the dungeon after I clobbered old Cease, I seen it right
away. Old Shurf was gone, so I didn't have him to contend with and all. Stuck
on the wall, right where a feller'd see it: a arrer pointing at the wall and
right under it, FOLLOW ME was wrote, kind of shaky, which I guess you was in a
hurry. I never knowed what it meant, but I give it a try—and I fell right
through that solid wall!" Marv shook his head wonderingly. "Then I
thought I was a bird, sailing troo the air, like. After a while I landed in
some kind of hospital, like, and they worked me over until I got loose—and here
I am. Uh, I forgot, the old lady in the hospital slips me the word you'd be on
this here corner. So I come over and see nothing of you, Al, but like I said, I
waited around, and here you are!"

            "It seems to me, Marv," Lafayette said
offhandedly, "that for a fellow from a simple, unspoiled locus like
Aphasia, you take all this pretty calmly—even the city here. Even though it's
only a hick town like Colby Corners, it must be a lot bigger than anything you
ever saw back in Aphasia."

            "I dunno," Marv replied, equally
casually. "I been around some, you know, Al."

            "That message bothers me," Lafayette
confessed. "It means somebody's still one jump ahead of me."

            "Unless he's lying," Mickey Jo said
sweetly. Marv's head jerked. "Hey," he said weakly. "Who you
calling a liar?"

            "I just said 'if', Mickey Jo asserted
soothingly.

            "Never mind; Sheriff Tode might have left
that sign on the wall," O'Leary commented. "I didn't. Apparently Tode
went through the same soft spot you did. I ran into him later, at Prime
HQ."

            "I don't get it," Mickey Jo put in.
"You guys talk like walking through a wall is routine."

            "Somehow," Lafayette hazarded,
"using the flat-walker must have left a temporary permeable area in the
wall. I don't know if that's usual, or not. I guess I should have found out a
little more about the gadgets from Ajax before I used them—and that reminds me:
Ajax gave me an address on Canal—but I didn't show up. Instead, I met Mickey
Jo," Lafayette said, smiling at the girl. "And I'm really glad I did.
But I wanted to ask you: Who did you think I was? You apparently assumed I was
somebody you more or less expected, asked me about the job I was on, assumed I
knew the bartender, and had an expense account, and so on. Who did you think I
was?"

            Mickey Jo looked at him helplessly. "I
don't think we should discuss that in public, do you, sir?" she said in a
strained voice quite different from her usual carefree tones.

            "There's nobody here but Marv,"
O'Leary replied comfortingly.

            "And by the way, why did the Ajax rep you
mentioned tell you to go to Canal?" the girl asked, looking around as if
she expected to see the answer to her question closing in from all sides.

            "I assume there'll be an Ajax contact
there," Lafayette admitted doubtfully. "But to heck with that, for
now. First, let's enjoy our dinner."

            "She's right, Al," Marv put in.
"How you gonna find this Daphne dame if you don't make contact?"

            "I'm perfectly willing—" Lafayette
began, but was cut off as the side wall of the spacious room burst inward,
propelled by a wall of water which churned tables, chairs, and patrons together
as it thundered toward the little group in the quiet corner. Lafayette felt his
ears pop and quickly employed the Valsalva maneuver to equalize pressure. Marv
was on his feet, yelling. Mickey Jo fell against Lafayette, her face next to
his. It was a long, chaos-filled moment before he realized she was saying
something:

            "Use the flat-walker.
Raf trass
spoit."

           
He fumbled the Ajax device from his
pocket even as the foaming flood engulfed him. He put it to his mouth, said,
"Ajax—emergency! Get me out of here!" before he choked on a mouthful
of muddy water. Through the translucent gray-green swirl, he saw a rectangle of
gray light, struck out for it, slid easily into open air, and lay gasping on
the faded carpet. Frumpkin came up out of his chair with a yelp of surprise and
stood over Lafayette, looking down at him balefully.

            "You're spoiling everything," he said
mournfully. "Now I'll have to relocate my Prime Vault."

            "I've heard of that," Lafayette said,
coughing. "It blew up."

            Frumpkin waved that away. "Not really. Just
a small Schrödinger collapse; a diversionary tactic, you see. That was while I
was still vulnerable, when Belarius attached himself to me—or so he
thought."

            "Where is this place?" Lafayette
demanded. He got to his feet and looked about for a window, but the long, dim
expanses of wallpaper were unperforated except for the door behind him.

            "Ah, that
is
a question, eh, my
lad?" Frumpkin said unctuously. "I fear you'll have to come to terms,
Lafayette. Unless you put an end to your resistance, I fear you shall never
find the headquarters."

            "What resistance?" Lafayette demanded.
"All I want to do is get back home with Daphne and go on having a swell
life."

            "Precisely. Your conceptualizations of the
swell life are no longer viable, Lafayette. You must accept the new
order—willingly."

            O'Leary rounded on him truculently. "If
your 'new order' means I'm supposed to like being kidnapped, thrown in
dungeons, kicked from pillar to post, and kept in the dark about what's going
on, you can forget it. Just call Daphne in, and we'll leave quietly."

            Frumpkin snapped his fingers, and at once Daphne
rose from the depths of a nearby overstuffed chair and came to stand before
Frumpkin, seeming not to see O'Leary.

            "Are you ill-treated, my dear?"
Frumpkin asked her silkily.

            She shook her head. "No, but that's not the
point."

            "Ah, the point, actually, is survival, eh,
Dame Edith?" Frumpkin prompted. He turned to Lafayette. "As you can
see, this young lady, by any name, is quite content."

            "Daphne!" Lafayette cried; he took a
step toward her but was thrown back by an invisible but resilient barrier; then
the light faded abruptly.

            They lay on a long shingle not of sand but of
finely granulated particles of the harder substances of which the streets and
buildings of the city had been constituted. Before them stretched the
breeze-ruffled surface of a broad lake; behind, an expanse gf grayish-black mud
from which the steel framework of a former building thrust up, debris clotted
on it. A late-model Auburn roadster lay on its side nearby, partially buried
under a jackdaw's nest of broken lumber. No people were in sight, but in the
far distance a few lights glowed, and somewhat closer a wisp of smoke rose
almost vertically into the tranquil evening sky. Overhead, the bloated moon
showed a tracery of red lines across its mottled face.

            Lafayette was the first to sit up, his mind
filled with the confused recollection of the gray room and Daphne, so
close—then an interminable struggle in churning water, fighting upward toward
dim light. He looked closely at Mickey Jo, lying unconscious beside him, her
electric-blue dress sodden and clinging. Beyond, Marv raised himself on an
elbow.

            "Why'd ya hafta go and do
that,
Al?"
he inquired in an aggrieved tone.

            "I didn't do anything," Lafayette
replied. "I was just about to try that crabmeat salad. It looked awful
good."

            "I et mine," Marv commented. "It
was plenty OK, onney I wisht I'd of had time to try a bite of that steak,
too."

            "There's smoke over there," Lafayette
said, pointing. "Let's go over. There must be some food left somewhere in
the ruins."

            "I dunno," Marv countered. "What
if they got guns?"

            "I didn't propose to attack them,"
Lafayette said.

            "Marv," Mickey Jo spoke up feebly.
"Why don't
you
go? We'll wait here. No use in all of us getting
kilt."

            "Well, if you ain't a square-deal little
..." Marv's voice faded to a mumble. He got to his feet, slapping at the
mud adhering to his soaked garments. He looked at O'Leary, who was looking at
the girl, who was holding a small automatic pistol aimed steadily at Marv's
head.

            "Go on," she said harshly.
"Git!"

            "Now, wait just a minute," O'Leary
objected. "There's no need for anything like that, Mickey Jo. I don't mind
going with him."

            "You're staying right here, O'Leary,"
she grated past clenched teeth. "You're both covered."

-

            "You know my name!" O'Leary gasped.
"Look here, Mickey Jo, it's about time for you to tell me what your game
is. Who are you, really?"

            "I got no game, O'Leary, I just do like the
man says. I'm a Group III agent in the PSS. Play it nice, now, and you won't
get hurt, as far as I know. They just want to reason with you."

            "Who's 'they'?" Lafayette demanded,
sidling to the left. The gun at once shifted aim by a few degrees to remain
aimed between the two men.

            "They're the Emergency Research
Committee," the girl said. She was sitting up now, her wet hair strung
across her face, from which the paint was gone, leaving her a remarkably
wholesome-looking young woman.

            "Sure. Now explain the explanation,"
Lafayette suggested. "And don't throw in a lot of weird names and places I
never heard of."

            "Some things just ain't simple,"
Mickey Jo answered. "But I'll try. After the disruption bomb on Nuke City,
they slapped on Full Class One Security; then the Prime Vault blew, and we knew
we were in deep trouble. That was in October. Before the TRAN meters blew out,
they registered a force-seven anomaly. Got it so far?"

            "No," Lafayette said. "But go on.
Where does Belarius IV fit into the picture?"

            "Nowhere. He was in the metering vault when
it blew. But what do you know about the big shot?"

            "He survived," Lafayette said.
"He and another sharpy named Frumpkin. But that's enough double-talk.
Let's get down to detail. How do you know my name? Even Marv here only knows me
as Allegorus, a crazy idea he got just because he met me in the Dread Tower, as
his bunch call it." Lafayette glanced at Marv, now fifty feet away and
moving off slowly.

            "You know what an entropic disjunction is,
Mr. O'Leary?" Mickey Jo inquired coldly.

            "Sort of," Lafayette admitted,
"to the extent that the term is self-explanatory. But the idea is a
paradox. So, it doesn't mean anything."

            "When the entire mass of galaxy is expelled
from its natural entropic lamina," Mickey Jo said in a tone of exhausted
patience, "all kinds of anomalies are generated. The last time it
happened, fifteen billion years ago, matter came into existence spontaneously
at the tertiary level, where it had no business being at all. That's what's
known as the Big Bang."